


Coping Mechanism

by starlabsforever



Series: Cry For Help [2]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, becoming evil and hurting your friends has lasting psychological consequences, caitlin's not okay, cw for suicidal ideation, poor cisco doesn't know what to do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 14:11:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11315037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlabsforever/pseuds/starlabsforever
Summary: Caitlin's increasingly reckless activities are worrying Cisco. She doesn't know how to admit that she wishes Julian hadn't saved her. Loose sequel to "Cry for Help".





	Coping Mechanism

**Author's Note:**

> Several people on tumblr requested a continuation of my "You could have been hurt" prompt fill (entitled "Cry for Help") and so here it is.

Caitlin woke up before she opened her eyes. She felt numb and stiff, and there was a relentless pressure in her head that somehow hurt and didn't at the same time. Her hand went to her head and she groaned softly.

“Caitlin,” someone said beside her, and she felt a warm hand on her arm.

She opened her eyes, blinking away the cloudy sheen of unconsciousness. “Cisco?” she murmured, even though the voice and the hand didn’t feel quite like him.

“He’s in the hallway, love,” the voice said, and the clouds in her vision parted so that she could see Julian leaning over her. She was in the med bay, laying in her own sterile medical cot. “I was starting to think you wouldn’t wake up.”

His eyes were big and blue and sad, but she was too tired to find the empathy for him that she should have. She sat up and her head throbbed.

Julian grabbed her shoulder. “You shouldn’t get up.”

She twisted away impatiently. “I want to see Cisco.”

She wasn’t sure why she wanted him. Maybe because everything hurt and she couldn’t remember anything that had happened, and he was warmth and comfort.

Julian should’ve served the same purpose, but he didn’t, not to her.

Julian blinked, looking stung. She thought he might argue with her, but instead he turned away. “I’ll get him.” His voice sounded strangled, but she couldn’t find it in her to care. “Just- stay in bed, alright? You had a close call there.”

She watched Julian’s hastily retreating back and reached up to rub her aching temples. She felt a tug at her wrist and glanced down to see an IV line. Her touched her head and her fingers hit the rough, grainy texture of a bandage, and around it she felt stiff, sticky clumps in her hair. Probably blood.

She had a vague idea of what had happened, but it wasn’t all there, and it was smeared and blurry around the edges, like the water damaged page of a book. She knew it couldn’t be good, because she was here, and that meant she’d been seriously hurt beyond the healing capabilities of her hyper-metabolism.

“Well?”

She blinked rapidly and turned to where Cisco was leaning one arm against the doorway. His eyes were deeply shadowed and his hair was pulled back into a frizzy ponytail at the base of his neck. His shirt was wrinkled, as if it he’d slept in it.

Caitlin tilted her chin to meet his eyes. “Well, what?”   
  
He stared back. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

The blurry events in her mind were slowly coming back, like the faint picture developing on a film reel, but she couldn’t quite reach it. Even so, she was beginning to realize that it wasn’t good. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The hell you don’t,” he said.

“I’m not going to know why you’re angry until you tell me, so cursing at me isn’t remotely helpful.”

Cisco’s cool, defiant expression didn’t change, but his brow did crinkle a little. “Can’t you remember?”

“Pretend I don’t.”

He let out a long sigh, bracing himself against the door frame. “You decided to go out and play vigilante again. Real nasty bunch, metas I ‘ve never seen before. I woke up to this vibe of you and I came to get you and-” He broke off and glanced at the ground. “Julian came to patch you up. Saved your life. You should buy him a gift basket or something.”

She waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. “That can’t possibly be all.”

His arm holding onto the frame dropped to his side. “Sorry if I don’t feel like rehashing the whole thing. I just finished living through it, and I’m spent.”

Caitlin felt frustration bubbling in her chest. “I remember some of it, but not all.” She sat up straighter and she could feel him watching. “Those weren’t just metas, they’re criminals. They sell vertigo to innocent kids.” His face twitched, his eyes deep and expressive. “I’ve been tracking them for weeks, and I managed to shut down a few of their operations. If I hadn’t done that, they would have ruined a lot more lives by now.”

“Hm.” Cisco crossed his arms over his chest and didn’t move, seemingly rooted in the doorway. “Right. That’s what you’ve been doing for weeks, right? Every time you’ve shown up here with some new injury and I have to patch you up.” She nodded. “See, here’s the funny thing, though. They weren’t doing anything this time. They didn’t have drugs, they weren’t selling anything, they were just minding their own business.”

She blinked at him. “What are you saying, that I should leave them alone when they’re not hurting anyone? They’re  _criminals,_ Cisco, they could-”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” he interrupted. His voice was hard and heavy and it stung. “It seemed to me like you picked the fight.”

More details were slowly trickling back in, but she held her ground. “What does that matter?”

“You tell me. You went after those guys by yourself, without backup, to pick a fight you knew you’d lose.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Doesn’t matter, right?”

Caitlin crossed her arms over her chest. “Why are you so angry?”

His eyes widened incredulously. “Gee, I dunno, maybe because my best friend is an idiot who keeps trying to kill herself!”

His eyes were alight, angrier than she’d ever seen before, and they looked like a stranger’s eyes. Then they dimmed, simmering down.

“You died,” he said in a low voice. He looked like the wind had been knocked out of his sails. “You flatlined.” Her heart skipped and ached belatedly, as if reminding her that it had endured one too many restarts and that she was on borrowed time. “Julian was a wreck, his hands were shaking all over the place, and he wanted to take you to the hospital. So did I, but we couldn’t.” He lowered his head, shoulders hunched. “I thought I was going to lose you again. There was blood everywhere and we had the defibrillator out and-” He gave an audible shudder and looked up at her. His eyes were wet. “It was last time all over again, except this time you did it to yourself.”

His words struck some weak, vulnerable spot beneath her ribcage and it hurt. “Why do you care?” she blurted.

He looked like she’d kicked him in the stomach. “Why would you say that?”

“I’m not your best friend,” she spat, and he ducked his head. “Not anymore. I’ve hurt and killed and caused pain. Why should you care if I live or die?” She breathed heavily. Every breath hurt. “Why should anyone?”

Cisco’s face had gone curiously still, as if someone pressed his pause button. She slowly laid back down against the pillow, curling herself into the edge of the cot. That had taken more energy than she had, and now her head ached and her chest ached.

She heard the soft patter of his Converse against the tile floor. She felt the mattress depress beside her from his weight.

“Cait,” he said huskily. “Caitlin, come on. You can’t just say something like that and then shut up.” She closed her eyes and pressed her head into the mattress. Everything hurt so deeply that she didn’t know where it was coming from.

“Please talk to me,” he murmured.

Caitlin turned her head so that she could see him. He was so close and she wanted so badly to reach out and fling herself into his arms, but the two feet between them felt like a canyon. “I’m really tired,” she whispered.

“Don’t do this,” he begged. “Don’t shut down, not now. Tell me what’s wrong. I’m sorry I’ve been an asshole, okay? I can see you hurting but I don’t know how to help you and I hate myself for it.”

She tried to focus on breathing normally, but every bone hurt. “I don’t know how to be anymore,” she admitted. He turned to look at her, his eyes locked with hers. “I don’t know how to live with myself after what I’ve done.”

“That wasn’t you.”

“Yes, it was,” she shot back, and tears pricked her eyes involuntarily. “I did horrible things, Cisco, worse than the people that I’ve been fighting. And I’m starting to think the rest of you would have been better off if Julian had left my necklace on that night.”

He recoiled. “No. No way. Don’t even say that.”

“Because you know it’s true,” she half-shouted. Her throat felt raw and hoarse.

Cisco shot to his feet and stepped away from the bed. His back was trembling. When he turned back around, he was clasping his hands together tightly.

“It’s not true,” he said. “That will never, ever be true. It doesn’t matter where you think you are in this whole good-evil dichotomy, okay? You deserve to  _live,_ god, Caitlin. Nothing you could do would change that.”

Caitlin swallowed and pressed her head into the pillow, just tired. Tired of this conversation, tired of feeling.

He knelt next to the bed, right by her head, his face inches away from hers. “I get it. I know how you feel. I’m tired too. I don’t always want to be here.” His face crumpled a little. “You know that.”

That hurt another part of her, buried so deep under the newest layers of trauma that she’d almost forgotten. The Gorilla City cell, a tearful conversation that devolved into a shouting match, and Cisco at his very lowest, cried out and husked out and desiccated.

Cisco recognized the defeat in her silence and breathed out quietly. She felt his breath on her nose. His breath was thick and warm, like he was sick. He was staring at her hand, like he wanted to reach out and touch her, but he didn’t.

There was so much distance between them these days.

“Come on,” he said. “Talk to me. Please talk to me.”  

She stared at him and he stared back. The silence between them was deafening.

Finally, she said, in a very small voice, “I’m tired. I need to sleep.”

He stared at her and blinked rapidly. “Okay.” He stood up, slowly, like it was an effort. “You rest up, alright? I’ll be here when you wake up.”

She shook her head. “You don’t have to. Julian’s here. Go home.”

“That would be unconscionable after what you just told me.”

“Cisco.” She pushed herself up with one arm. “I don’t want to die.”

Cisco pursed his lips, looking like he wanted to debate that. “Good. Because I don’t know if I could force myself to pick up and go on if it ever came to that.”

He reached out to touch her hand, and then halted himself in midair. He swallowed hard and headed for the door.

She watched his back, and wanted so badly to call his name, for him to come and sit on the bed and hug her and hold her and tell her everything would be alright.

But that was a lie. She knew that now.

Cisco had paused in the doorway, watching her with careful intensity. “I can stay if you want me to.”

Oh, that was all she wanted, and all she had to do was tell him.

But their world had changed. Things had always been changing, but now it was beyond the point of recognition. They couldn’t fix everything with a hug and a heart-to-heart.

She didn’t know how to fix herself. She didn’t know if she could.

He was waiting for an answer. “Cait?” he asked softly.

She rolled onto her side so that she couldn’t see his face. “I just need to sleep.” 

The silence roared to a crescendo.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll be in the cortex. Shout if you need me.”

 _I do need you,_ she thought, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words out loud.


End file.
